ESPN: Will Eagles' Pace Lead to More Injuries?

It's full speed ahead for Chip Kelly in Philadelphia, but is it only a matter of time before Michael Vick, LeSean McCoy and DeSean Jackson end up injured? Theoretically, if you increase the number of plays, you increase the opportunities for players to get hurt.

However, we ran some correlation tests on teams from 2002-12 using our Adjusted Games Lost (AGL) metric and the offensive pace stats. The results were actually very interesting and perhaps discouraging for the Eagles.

You can call me a tease, but the results are on Insider. We will leave you with a table of the offenses since 2002 with the fastest and slowest pace (seconds per play). The AGL (offense only) ranks are for that particular season.

Slowest Offenses (2002-12)

Fastest Offenses (2002-12)

Team

Year

Sec./play

AGL (OFF)

AGL Rank

Team

Year

Sec./play

AGL (OFF)

AGL Rank

PIT

2007

31.31

9.0

3

NE

2012

24.12

46.7

25

PIT

2004

31.17

13.3

13

SEA

2009

24.67

44.3

29

PIT

2005

30.82

15.2

16

NE

2011

24.76

40.0

22

SEA

2012

30.55

14.8

6

MIA

2005

24.95

6.1

7

NYJ

2004

30.44

6.8

4

DET

2002

25.48

20.9

22

JAC

2006

30.36

25.0

22

CHI

2007

25.57

18.3

9

DEN

2003

30.29

14.9

18

BAL

2012

25.64

8.1

2

MIA

2008

30.24

24.1

16

KC

2009

25.64

13.0

9

PIT

2009

30.22

23.9

16

NO

2012

25.69

11.5

4

NYG

2008

30.22

6.1

1

PHI

2012

25.73

65.2

32

You can see last year's Eagles ranked 32nd in AGL among all offenses. You can also see the three slowest-paced offenses since 2002 were Ben Roethlisberger's early years with Pittsburgh. That's not a coincidence. Five of the 11 slowest offenses have been Roethlisberger offenses, so here's your proof that he seems to wait until the last second to snap the ball way too often.

You can track the speed of the Eagles and all offenses this season with our new pace stats here.

I don't have Insider so I can't read the full article, but the table doesn't seem that interesting. Not one 'slow' team had a losing record, and their combined record was 107-53. The 'fast' teams had just 4 winning records and a combined record of 74-86. The only reason that is even close to .500 is because of NE, throw them out and the 'fast' teams are 49-79. So, teams win because they play slow and stay healthy? Or do they win because they are healthy, and play slow because they are always ahead ? Likewise teams lose because they play fast and get hurt, or they lose because they are hurt, and play fast because they are always behind and trying to catch up ? I bet the correlations between team record and pace, and between AGL and team record are both higher than the correlation between AGL and pace.

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